By Simon Hole
We chat by the nurses’ station, helping each other stay awake. I’ve been pulling night shifts here for eighteen months. Tricia’s a new hire, still getting to know the patients. She often brings them into our conversations.
“What’s with 207? She’s had no visitors since June. She’s lucid often enough to know she’s been abandoned. I feel bad.”
I stare at the floor. How do I explain that 207 was a miserable, demanding, self-centered bitch; that nothing anyone ever did was good enough? How do I explain that my mother deserves to be alone?
I nod and say, “Yeah, it’s sad.”
Very well done, Simon. Nice lead-in to the last line.
Amazing story, so well conceived and rendered, devastating finále –and WHY the narrator chooses to work there remains the thing that’ll haunt me most. Great job, Simon.
Wow! Truly a real-life horror story, Simon. Great!
What’s very special about this, I think, is that it could easily have existed without the last line (word count permitting) but that final line lifts the story still higher. Yikes!
I agree the last line was a throw in, but I really liked this story. It was great that first you understand the new worker and then totally empathize with the second. A lot of emotion for a short piece.
Nice!
Wow! What a wake up call for negative, snarly people. And what a torrent of emotion for people who must face such issues. A very real slice of life.
I’m glad I saw this one. Feels real, as good fiction does.